Switch Back Rag

I feel that in the last two days I've finally found my groove again at the keyboard, for the first time since I came down with the flu a few weeks ago. The trigger has been finding a piece that's just plain fun to play.

I tested out using my demos of Sibelius First and PhotoScore to scan in some sheet music so I could play it back and hear what it was supposed to sound like (a process that went remarkably smoothly, once I got past the recalcitrant scanner). One of the pieces I listened to was called Switch Back Rag from First Ragtime Pieces by Dennis Alexander, and since it was catchy enough to get stuck in my head, I decided to learn it. It's at just the right level to be challenging yet doable, but longer than anything I've learned thus far (two whole pages! :) ).

The challenge for me seems to center on the areas where the left hand is playing a normal 4/4 background while the right is doing something syncopated. My usual strategy of learning HS and then putting them together isn't working as well as usual because part of the time the melody moves from hand to hand, and then when they're playing together the individual parts are straightforward enough -- the whole problem is interweaving them effectively.